If looks were the defining factor regarding the ultimate speed of a car, then the W04 looks slow compared to its rivals. As an ex engineer(albeit not in motorsport) and following F1 for 3 decades, the sport according to the pundits/Technical directors/chief designers claim the sport has moved to the point of aero points/efficient downforce equals laptime and therefore success and this is where Mercedes falls flat on their face IMO. I get the impression looking at the W04, that the design engineers set the parametres and the aerodynamics department work around them, with a little bit of give and take here and there. Comparing that to Neweys' cars post RB5 and this years MP4-28, I get the distinct impression these teams knew what aero numbers they wanted as a minimum and then demanded their engineers design and packaged the car within that framework.

Tight packaging for aero benefit we are told is the key and the W04 looks fat in comparison. If unrestricted/unobstructed/high volume/clean airflow to the rear of the car is the holy grail, in order to work/seal the difuser in conjunction with the exhaust gases, as well as to power the lower rear beam wing, then the W04 to the open eye is a poor attempt compared to the Ferrari, Red Bull, Sauber, Renault and McLaren.

Conversely was last years Mp4-27 as tightly packaged as the RB8? The answer is clearly no, plus it had a lower chassis, yet the MP4-27 was a match and at times superior to the RB8, so what does the average armchair F1 engineer/aerodynamicist like me know? There is more than one way to skin a cat, so lets wait and see what the stopwatch says until we write the obituary for the W04. Its Long run pace in Jerez will reveal if the car is in the same ball park as the leading cars or not, and the 1st Barcelona test will only confirm this. Anybody claiming the 1st test wont reveal nothing, clearly has not been following F1 long enough. It reveals a lot. Maybe not the ultimate pace, but whether the car is there, thereabouts, or simply off the pace.

According to Twitter, the car went past the pits slow and was pushed back into its Garage..

..apparently it 'ran out of fuel'.

Doesn't bode well does it.

They did it on purpose.. i bet you will see other teams doing it tomorrow just like last year, merc probly are just getting it out of the way now while they have the chance so they dont have to red flag the track and wait for the car to come back during a test day.

I'm of the opinion that we will have some closing up of the top teams this year; some of Red Bull's advantages have been eroded - because of the changes to the DRS rules and front wing load tests, as well as other teams have been able to incorporate their ideas around the rear of the car.

Added to the fact that they were actually close to being on the pace in the early stages of last season before they discovered the double DRS led them up a development blind-alley and they then obviously switched off developing the W03 to concentrate on this car, I expect them to be closer to the top 4 than in 2012; they will win races. (Oh yes, they've also improved their driver line-up too!)

Even I would admit that signing Hamilton instead of Schumi at 43 is probably not a backwards step. But Nico will beat Hamilton at times this season, Schumi beat Nico quite a lot last season and the year before, the car is more important.

The car will be what decides where they will be beating each other. For 7th or 8th, or for 3rd or 4th, or maybe even for 1st or 2nd?

If the car is 7th or 8th at the first race, is there any guarantee that it will improve over the season? It hasn't since, well, a long time ago if at all.

Who can really tell...there have been examples of a car rising heavily throughout the season, for instance the 2009 McLaren.

I expect however for Mercedes to really lay it on thick at the start of next season, giving the fact that they will have the advantage of developing their own engine and therefore having lots of data more than customer cars (and not only Mercedes customers, this applies to all customer cars).

Dont want to read too much into the short interview, but Lewis didnt seem happy, especially when you contrast how Nico was after his drive, Nico said similar things regarding "wrong tires" and "waiting until testing" etc but he still seemed a lot more upbeat than Lewis.

As a Lewis fan admittedly i'm hoping that Im just reading too much into things, but you know when Lewis is happy about something as his face is very easy to read and to me he looks concerned.

while Mercedes are confident, I'm worried. no team has been sitting idle, and quite frankly, this year even sauber had a better base to begin their campaign with than merc. if they're properly running 3-4 through the season, I'd think that the design was good enough to begin with. I have my doubts but even if they start with a truck, they'll catch some teams with smaller budgets with some developments through the season.

Renault are working rather well with RBR and I doubt that there will be much slack, if any, on part of either of them come 2014. Similarly Ferrari have their own engine and they're not that bad with engines, and they'd be competitive no doubts about it what so ever. Lotus brought a pretty good car design last year and have built on it this year, and given the competence of the team, I'll think they will have good car to work with next year, if not the total package what with new engines. Mercedes can only move forward really, but there are a host of changes they're making to the structure of the team, and it couldn't possibly have come at a worst time. They have an opportunity to do some damage to the existing order, but all the changes will take their toll. What the overall impact will be, it's hard to say, but sure it does slow down things for a bit. transitions are never painless.

I guarantee that he'll have an iPhone or s3 in his pocket for personal use. You'd be crazy to try and use a blackberry as your main phone these days. Nasty, nasty devices.

Doubtful - him being seen using anything other than a blackberry will probably trigger some clause in he sponsorship contract.

Given BlackBerry's financial situation I doubt they were bringing enough money to make demands like that. They have been in pretty serious financial difficulty for a few years now, and their products just arent selling. If the BB10 flops (which its obviously expected to do) it'll likely be the end for them.

BBRY has about $2.9 billion in cash, more than enough to pay Mercedes for 2013 season. Obviously if company situation was superb they wouldn't need such a extensive advertising. When you see that company is advertising more than it usually does, you can be quite sure that it is in troubles. The question is whether it is real Lewis tweeting or some PR person.

Gonna have nightmares telling Nico and Lewis apart at Silverstone this year!

Color of the T-Bar should help.

T-Bar doesn't always help, it's been a pain trying to tell the STR boys apart in 2012, and I remember once Vettel had a helmet that looked similar to Webbers with a yellow top and I was always second guessing my self on who it was, especially when they showed the T-Bar camera where you cant see the red/yellow colour on top of the car. In races its not so bad as you can tell where certain drivers are in relation to the rest of the field, but in practice, qualifying or when one of them is shown on the side of the road it takes a few moments to figure out who it is.

Dont want to read too much into the short interview, but Lewis didnt seem happy, especially when you contrast how Nico was after his drive, Nico said similar things regarding "wrong tires" and "waiting until testing" etc but he still seemed a lot more upbeat than Lewis.

As a Lewis fan admittedly i'm hoping that Im just reading too much into things, but you know when Lewis is happy about something as his face is very easy to read and to me he looks concerned.

Thought....

Pretty much what I was thinking too.

_________________Winner of the [Charging Hamilton Trophy] !Winner of the [Dominant Hamilton Trophy] !

Dont want to read too much into the short interview, but Lewis didnt seem happy, especially when you contrast how Nico was after his drive, Nico said similar things regarding "wrong tires" and "waiting until testing" etc but he still seemed a lot more upbeat than Lewis.

As a Lewis fan admittedly i'm hoping that Im just reading too much into things, but you know when Lewis is happy about something as his face is very easy to read and to me he looks concerned.

Lads and Ladettes. It's testing this is what it is for. Look at McLaren in '11 they hardly ran a full race distance in all the tests combined. Look how that turned out. Or Lotus and their dodgy chassis last year.

Jerez is basically a shakedown anyway to niggle out these problems as well.

Lads and Ladettes. It's testing this is what it is for. Look at McLaren in '11 they hardly ran a full race distance in all the tests combined. Look how that turned out. Or Lotus and their dodgy chassis last year.

Jerez is basically a shakedown anyway to niggle out these problems as well.

As gets said every year. It's only testing it means nothing.

I'm sure you're right, which it was why i felt it so strange that he came across so underwhelmed. I guess we'll see what tomorrow brings....

Lads and Ladettes. It's testing this is what it is for. Look at McLaren in '11 they hardly ran a full race distance in all the tests combined. Look how that turned out. Or Lotus and their dodgy chassis last year.

Jerez is basically a shakedown anyway to niggle out these problems as well.

As gets said every year. It's only testing it means nothing.

I agree with you. According to last year's Jerez and Barcelona results, either Williams or Lotus should've been the top dogs. McLarens barely scratched 4th or 5th on the time sheets yet they came as the first title contenders. Similarly, Red Bull didn't show anything during the tests, yet on Australia they were totally different. And don't forget the trick of DDRS the Merc came only in Australia when everybody started to panic on FP2 Melbourne '12 when Schumacher finished first.

So testing means basically nothing to the true performance. That should vaguely be obvious on FP1 Melbourne.

Eh, we'll never know until it actually starts. If I remember correctly, Brawn 2009 mopped the floor with the the competition even in the tests they've participated. So, sometimes, it does show some signs...anyway, Jerez is always a shot in the dark, everybody's verifying their blueprints and trying to hide whatever next big thing they've discovered, but it's the best discussion subject we have so far. We've got to say something, be it good, bad, catastrophic, otherwise it would be just like ignoring the session, wouldn't it?

Dont want to read too much into the short interview, but Lewis didnt seem happy, especially when you contrast how Nico was after his drive, Nico said similar things regarding "wrong tires" and "waiting until testing" etc but he still seemed a lot more upbeat than Lewis.

As a Lewis fan admittedly i'm hoping that Im just reading too much into things, but you know when Lewis is happy about something as his face is very easy to read and to me he looks concerned.

Thought....

Pretty much what I was thinking too.

Thoguht the same too. No doubt he was comparing it to the McLaren.

who would've thunk that a team which made poor cars three years in a row, would suck again.

Dont want to read too much into the short interview, but Lewis didnt seem happy, especially when you contrast how Nico was after his drive, Nico said similar things regarding "wrong tires" and "waiting until testing" etc but he still seemed a lot more upbeat than Lewis.

As a Lewis fan admittedly i'm hoping that Im just reading too much into things, but you know when Lewis is happy about something as his face is very easy to read and to me he looks concerned.

Thought....

Pretty much what I was thinking too.

Thoguht the same too. No doubt he was comparing it to the McLaren.

who would've thunk that a team which made poor cars three years in a row, would suck again.

This, especially since the rules are pretty much the same as last year. No team is suddenly going to find over a second with a car that is just a evolution of the previous one. It'll take time and effort and possibly a massive upheaval in the rules before that will happen. 2014 is make or break for Merc and Hamilton.